Wait, what? Many cash-strapped cities and counties facing the prospect of shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in new health-care costs under the Affordable Care Act are opting instead to reduce the number of hours their part-time employees work. The decisions to cut employee hours come 16 months before employers — including state and local governments — will be required to offer health-care coverage | Read More »

In light of the current teacher’s union strike in Chicago, it is clear that a wide gulf between funding and compensation exists. When pointing out the fact that the majority of federal and state public employees are overcompensated, the response is typically that “these amounts were promised”. But with most budgets now currently running severely in the red, addressing the compensation question is the key | Read More »

﻿﻿If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that my day job is in the building trades. The current downturn of our economy has hit this industry hard, and the people I deal with daily have paid a heavy price for this Administration’s assault on the free market. Recently however, I’ve seen a shift in sector job loss that might just be | Read More »

From the diaries by Erick On March 7, the Wisconsin Senate passed a bill reforming the public sector union bargaining process. For weeks, the Senate remained at an impasse on the issue as absent Senate Democrats denied the quorum required to move forward. By redrafting the bill to exclude certain fiscal items, a 2/3 quorum was no longer required to vote on the legislation. The | Read More »

From the diaries by Erick On March 7, the Wisconsin Senate passed a bill reforming the public sector union bargaining process. For weeks, the Senate remained at an impasse on the issue as absent Senate Democrats denied the quorum required to move forward. By redrafting the bill to exclude certain fiscal items, a 2/3 quorum was no longer required to vote on the legislation. The | Read More »

There is an object lesson in most every tale. You can make the lesson a benign one, a false one, or actually dig deep to discover the truth. The real story in the debacle in Wisconsin’s public union mess is one that everyone knows, everyone accepts, and few are willing to tell. The Democratic Party in Wisconsin is thoroughly and completely corrupted by public labor | Read More »

Congress has created a monster. For years the subject of public sector pensions raised the ire of heard, but never seen, conspiracy theorists. As the years have passed, they continued to grow with no oversight and very little public pushback. In the shadows they have grown into a ravaging monstrosity, a Frankenstein’s monster that is threatening the financial wellbeing of our local and state governments. | Read More »

Labor unions are their own worst enemy. They were formed with laudable goals, finding power in numbers to fight against the poor working conditions, long hours, and low pay of many early manufacturing jobs. Recently, unions have fallen on hard times. Their percentage of the workforce has fallen to a historical low of 8%. Moreover, In 1957 sixty-one percent more people approved than disapproved of | Read More »

We as a society love teachers. They are the nurturers of talent. The cultivators of intelligence. The rudder that steers this nation’s future generations. They represent some of our fondest memories. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the sacrifice that we are making as a nation to get our finances back on track. Let me repeat: they must be part of the sacrifice. | Read More »

Every family budgets. In one form or another they sit around a table, figure out how much they earn, decide how much they can spend, and hopefully save a little bit for the future. Under the Obama administration those budgets have gotten a lot tighter, at least if you work in the private sector. Nevertheless, families understand that each side of the ledger must be | Read More »

For those who work in the private sector, the dream of enjoying a comfortable retirement has become just that — a dream. The impact of the recession continues to be brutal, especially on younger workers whose career earnings may never recover. Of course life isn’t too pleasant older generations who will be forced to spend their golden years making up for lost earnings. A recent | Read More »

Promoted from the diaries by Bill S. “Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government.” So warned the union-friendly Franklin Roosevelt about the danger of public sector unionism. Some of us have ignored his counsel while others have simply chosen to look the other way. Regardless of your motivation all eyes | Read More »

Promoted from the diaries by Bill S. “Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government.” So warned the union-friendly Franklin Roosevelt about the danger of public sector unionism. Some of us have ignored his counsel while others have simply chosen to look the other way. Regardless of your motivation all eyes | Read More »

This is a HUGE problem. Michael Barone has written an excellent in-depth article on this increasingly important issue and you can read it on Townhall.com, Mon Feb 8, 2010. I don’t wish to duplicate his work but I don’t think it can be stated strongly enough. These unions have to be brought under control before it is too late – and it is very late | Read More »

After I posted a story about how there is virtually no one in the Obama administration with private sector business experience, I began to further consider the practical implications of this. Intuitively, one would conclude that a group of policymakers who don’t understand business and capitalism probably would not have a clue about making public policy that is friendly to business. And indeed, this appears | Read More »